In this paper, we provide a survey of the diachronic development of the Russian second genitive (Gen2). As endpoints of this development, we consider data from Russian dialects representing different dialect groups. Assumedly, the expansion of Gen2 started off as ‘recycling’ of the genitive of a declension type that became obsolete already in the pre-written period. Nouns of this declension type were adopted by another declension, carrying their old genitive over as a variant form. This alternative ending started spreading, always as a variant, to other nouns in the adoptive declension. As the survey of the literature shows, in the course of this expansion new constraints evolved, including phonological, morphophonological, phonotactic, syntactic and semantic conditioning. While there is no declension class or even individual nouns where Gen2 became the only option, it expanded to different extents in different dialects. We believe that the diversity of functions associated with the form, the range of language-internal factors driving its expansion, as well as the current geographic distribution of constraints on its formation weaken the claim that emergence of Gen2 as a morphological category dedicated to partitive was due to contact with the languages of the Circumbaltic area, a suggestion made on a macro-areal basis and also based on comparison with the northern dialects alone. While we cannot argue that the data we present disproves the contact factor, we would at least expect that the increased granularity of dialectal data would provide some data to support it. This is not what happens, which we consider to be an argument against contact-induced change. The aim of the paper is two-fold: to present a synopsis of the discussions of the history of Gen2 and a survey of the data on the use of Gen2 in the dialects, both firsthand and available from the literature; and to question the role of contact in the emergence of the new category of Gen2 in Russian.

We study the correlation between phylogenetic and geographic distances for the languages of the Andic branch of the East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian) language family. For several alternative phylogenies, we find that geographic distances correlate with linguistic divergence. Notably, qualitative classifications show a better fit with geography than cognacy-based phylogenies. We interpret this result as follows: The better fit may be due to implicit geographic bias in qualitative classifications. We conclude that approaches to classification other than those based on cognacy run a risk to implicitly include geography and geography-related factors as one basis of genealogical classifications.

Abstract Glottalized sonorants are a rare sound type that has been under scrutiny for a number of reasons of general relevance to the phonetic theory. It has been claimed that the timing of glottalization of glottalized sonorants may shift in accordance with the position in the syllable onset (pre-glottalization) or coda (post-glottalization), to provide a cue for its place of articulation; other studies argued against this claim. The paper investigates acoustic properties of the glottalized lateral in Rikvani Andi, a one-village dialect of Andi (East Caucasian). Based on the data from elicitations and free narratives, we consider the acoustic correlates that have been argued in the literature to differentiate glottalized sonorants from their modal counterparts, including aperiodicity, intensity, duration and spectral tilt. In Rikvani Andi, all of the correlates prove to be statistically significant in recordings of isolated words, but the differences tend to decrease in free narratives. The timing of glottalization does not support the existing generalizations – while the glottalized lateral only occurs in Rikvani Andi in the syllable onset, it tends to be mid- to post-glottalized. We discuss two possible explanations of why the Rikvani Andi glottalized sonorant fails to comply with typological expectations.

In this paper, I consider double causatives in Mehweb, a one village language spoken in Daghestan, Russia, and belonging to the Dargwa branch of East Caucasian. The capability of stacking two causative suffixes seems to be lexically restricted, and mapping onto verbal meanings that are typically P-labile in the languages of the family. Interestingly, the verbs allowing double causatives are not morphosyntactically labile in Mehweb, which is generally poor in labile verbs as compared to sister languages. I conclude that the ability to form double causatives is not a consequence of the morphosyntactic property of being labile; rather, both morphosyntactic properties follow from the same component of the lexical semantics of these verbs and ultimately from the properties of the situational concepts they convey. As a tentative functional explanation I suggest that the relevant property is the weakened status of the agentive participant.

In this article, we address the issue of reliability of quantitative data on multilingualism of the past obtained as recall data. More specifically, we investigate whether the interviewees’ assessments of the language repertoires of their late relatives (indirect data) provide results that are quantitatively similar to those obtained from the people of the same age range themselves (direct data). The empirical data we use come from an ongoing field study of traditional multilingualism in Daghestan (Russia). We trained machine learning models to see whether they can detect differences in indirect and direct data. We conclude that our indirect quantitative data on L2 other than Russian are essentially similar to direct data, while there may be a small but systematic underestimation when reporting others’ knowledge of Russian.

This article looks at the correlation between the use of a langugage as L2 and the amount of lexical material borrowed from it. Our data come from the highlands of Daghestan. By matching loanword counts with data on multilingualism, the study quantitatively supports the suggestion that lexical borrowing from a lingua franca is more intense than from other languages in a multilingual repertoire (Brown 1996, 2011). Brown hypothesizes that the importance of lingua francas as lexical donors is linked to a high rate of bilingualism. In our data. knowledge of languages other than the lingua franca was high at some locations but did not lead to substantial borrowing. We discuss the social conditions of a lingua franca that make it a likely donor. Among other factors, a lingua franca might not be as strongly associated with an ethnic identity as languages that are used only in communicating with L1 speakers of that language, and lexical borrowing from it does not threaten anyone's identity (cf. Epps 2018, Vaughan 2019).*

This chapter provides a sociolinguistic account of the languages of the Caucasus, including figures for speakers and their geographical distribution, language vitality, the official status of the languages, orthography, and writing practices. The chapter discusses language repertoires typical of different areas in the Caucasus, and their change over the 20th century. As a showcase, it provides an overview of traditional multilingualism in Daghestan, the most linguistically dense are in the Caucasus. It discusses various patterns of interethnic communication, including lingua franca and asymmetrical bilingualism. We show that bilingualism was gendered, and how Russian was spreading in the area as a new lingua franca. The chapter surveys the outcomes of language contact, covering both lexical borrowing (including main references to etymological research) and providing examples of structural convergence, with a special focus on the area of the highest language density in the Caucasus, Dagestan. Data in the chapter are based both on official sources (censuses), on information provided by experts and on the authors’ own work in the field.

Aims and Objectives: We assess whether data on lexical borrowing obtained through field elicitation may point not only to a specific donor language but also to its specific regional variety, and whether these data are a reliable tool for reconstructing unknown historical patterns of interaction between ethnic subgroups. Methodology: We use quantitative analysis of the data obtained by loanword probing-elicitations of short wordlists from speakers of minority languages-to calculate the amount and identify the source of lexical transfer. We compare the results across several areas with varying degrees of bilingualism and different contact varieties of the donor language to see how this influences our results. Data: The data for this study come from a large-scale field study in Daghestan, with 72 people from 19 villages speaking four languages. Findings: Our method suggests that speech communities clearly indicate one of the regional varieties of Azerbaijani as the donor, depending on the area of data collection. We also observe that the degree of lexical convergence with the donor depends not only on the level of bilingualism observed in the specific village but also on the native language of this village, suggesting language borders as a natural constraint to the spread of lexical borrowing. Originality: The study is novel in that it is fully based on analysis of data on lexical convergence obtained through fieldwork on minority languages and provides quantitative results that can be compared across speech communities in the survey. Implications: We conclude that the method is sensitive enough to trace donorship to specific regional varieties of the donor language. Limitations: Our observations on the relative weight of the level of bilingualism and language affiliation of a speech community as predictors of the degree of lexical convergence require more data obtained both from other linguistic environments and by different methods.

This paper introduces the future Atlas of Multilingualism in Daghestan, a project based on extensive field study of the language repertoires of the residents of rural highland Daghestan. The Atlas will provide quantitative data on multilingualism across a relatively compact linguistic area, which is, culturally and socially, both homogeneous and diverse. It will represent a wide range of ethnic contact situations in a qualitatively and quantitatively comparable way. The data are collected by the method of retrospective family interviews, which is designed to obtain data about bilingualism in the past. The paper gives a brief sociolinguistic overview of Daghestan, describes the method and its restrictions, explains the design of the future Atlas, and provides two sample chapters. One of the chapters describes three villages in northeast Daghestan, and the other describes two villages in southern Daghestan.

The Animacy Hierarchy was introduced as a cross-grammatical factor which governs, in different languages, widespread splits of nominal categories, including case or number marking. Among othser phenomena, the Animacy Hierarchy has been invoked to describe the lexical distribution of associative plurals. In this paper I argue that associative plurals as an interpretation of nominal plurality is not licensed by the high position the respective noun holds on the Animacy Hierarchy but is a combined effect of coercion by the unique reference inherent to proper names and associative links easily recoverable for human referents. Interpretation of associative plurals relies upon activation of set relations its referent holds to other entities in the speech act situation. Associative plural is argued to be an indexical rather than a functional semantic category.∗

The articulatory interpretation and transcription of lower-vocal-tract sounds in Caucasian languages has long been a source of confusion. The Russian literature, notably by Kibrik and Kodzasov, provides insight into the auditory distinctions in Archi, Agul, and Dargwa, among others. However, the model of vocal tract articulatory function and the experimental techniques available in their time lacked precision in identifying the laryngeal and pharyngeal strictures and movements responsible for laryngeal/pharyngeal sounds. We reinterpret the pharyngeal, epiglottal, and pharyngealized contrasts in Caucasian languages using a model of laryngeal articulation that specifies degrees of laryngeal constriction, vibratory effects, and larynx height parameters. We focus on Archi, Agul, and Dargwa languages Mehweb and Shiri. Phonetic categories in the earlier inventories are assigned remapped articulatory definitions. The Russian researchers’ observations of degrees of epiglottis lowering are seen as an indication of the laryngeal articulatory mechanism constricting, with larynx raising, to form constriction.

We analyze the dynamics of dialect loss in a cluster of villages in rural northern Russia based on a corpus of transcribed interviews, the Ustja River Basin Corpus. Eleven phonological and morphological variables are analyzed across 33 speakers born between 1922 and 1996 in a series of logistic regression models. We propose three characteristics for a comparison of the rate of loss of different variables: initial level, steepness, and turning point. We show that the dynamics of loss differs significantly across variables and discuss possible reasons for such differences, including perceptual salience, initial variation in the dialect, and convergence with regionally or socially defined varieties of Russian. In conclusion, we discuss the pros and cons of logistic regression as an approach to quantitative modeling of dialect loss. Our paper contributes to the study and documentation of Russian dialects, most of which are on the verge of extinction.

In Bagvalal (East Caucasian), native place names show strongly reduced morphological inflection. They combine with spatial suffixes identical to those used on nouns and spatial adverbs and with attributive and plural suffixes identical to those of nominal genitive and plural and thus have mixed adverbial nominal morphology. Place names are unmarked in spatial function but marked in argument position. To occur in the latter, they require a nominal head with an abstract meaning such as 'village' or 'place'. Bagvalal place names are syntactically adverbs rather than nouns. Considering syntax and morphology together, they constitute a morphosyntactic class intermediate between nouns and adverbs. Mixed properties of Bagvalal place names are functionally motivated. Place names are, first of all, locations (hence spatial inflection), but also territories associated with specific ethnic and sub-ethnic groups (hence attributive and plural inflection). I conclude by briefly reviewing evidence from some other East Caucasian languages, to show that Bagvalal is not an exception.

In polysynthetic West Caucasian languages, the morphological verbal complex amounts to a clause with all kinds of participants cross-referenced by affixes. Relativization is performed by introducing a relative affix in the cross-reference slot that corresponds to the relativized participant. However, these languages display several crosslinguistically rare features of relativization. Firstly, while under the view of the verbal complex as a clause this affix appears to be a relative pronoun, it is an unusual relative pronoun because it remains in situ. Secondly, relative affixes may appear several times in the same clause. Thirdly, relative pronouns are not expected to occur in languages with prenominal relative clauses. Fourthly, in the Circassian branch, relative pronouns are identical to reflexive pronouns. These features are explained by considering relative prefixes to be resumptive pronouns. This interpretation finds a parallel in the neighboring East Caucasian languages, where reflexive pronouns also show resumptive usages. Finally, since in some West Caucasian languages the relative affix is a morpheme with a dedicated relative function but still shows properties of a resumptive pronoun, our data suggest that the distinction between relative pronouns and resumptive pronouns may not be as clear as is usually assumed.

In this article, I consider the inflection of property words in Archi (Lezgic, East Caucasian). While property words show some similarities with verbs (and are indeed classified as a sybtype of verbs in Kibrik et al.'s 1977 granunar of Archi), I argue that this similarity is too superficial to categorize them as verbs. I first consider inflectional morphology of true verbs and show that it includes several layers of morphological markers distinguished by the degree of their morphological boundedness, from true suffixes to cross-categorial clitics. I then show that all similarities between property words and verbs are limited to the external layers of verb inflection, while the suffixes belonging to the internal, more bound layers cannot attach to property words. I conclude that while both verbs and property words are predicative, they do not belong to the same morphosyntactic class but form clearly distinct parts of speech. From the typological perspective on the adjective as a cross-linguistic category, I suggest the following interpretation. While Archi property words are not adjectives under the morphosyntactic approach to the typology of adjectives (as proposed by Hengeveld and Schachter, among others), because they are obligatorily marked in adnominal position and may remain unmarked in predicative position, they conform to the expectations of the semantic approach (advocated by Dixon and Aikhenvald), which predicts that no human language completely assimilates verbs and property verbs in terms of their morphosyntax.

The paper considers the pronoun used in logophoric contexts in Archi, an East Caucasian language of the Lezgic group. Like many other languages of the family, Archi shows a formal connection between logophoric and reflexive pronouns. The latter differs from the former in that it carries an obligatory intensifier particle. This connection questions the suggestion in Culy (1997); cf. also Dimmendaal (2001) to separate African-style ‘pure’ logophoric systems from systems where a long-distance reflexive is used in the same context. Culy (1997), in a typological analysis of logophoricity, argues that long-distance reflexives in logophoric contexts are a secondary extension of the reflexive function. Toldova (1999), in an overview of East Caucasian systems, suggests on the contrary that, in these languages, logophoricity is the primary function and the reflexive function is its extension. In their approaches, neither Culy nor Toldova rely on notions such as focus of empathy (Kuno, 1987), and Culy even explicitly disproves its relevance for the typology of logophoric systems. The solution suggested in the present study is discourse-based and is not unlike the focus of empathy. Both logophoric and reflexive uses of the Archi pronoun, corresponding to two clearly different and well established comparative concepts, constitute one descriptive category (Haspelmath, 2010). They both are extensions of the core function of the pronoun which is to mark the special pragmatic/discourse role of its referent – extensions that involve grammaticization of the pronoun in specific contexts as reflexives and logophoric.